


Dear Jean

by Winter_of_tomorrow



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gothic/Punk!Marco, M/M, Sidestory for "Dear Ex-Brother", but can be read without knowing the mainstory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 05:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6317455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winter_of_tomorrow/pseuds/Winter_of_tomorrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Jean met Marco, he lost his phone and the freckled angel found it. They become friends and when Jean invites Marco to stay for a night, everything goes just fine. Until the next morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dear Jean

**Author's Note:**

> Finally the missing part for the Jeanmarco-Story of my ereri-fanfic "Dear Ex-Brother" (just took me 1 1/2 years! *crawls away*).
> 
> PLEASE read [the second chapter](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2656685/chapters/6114176) of "Dear Ex-Brother" first, then go on with this fanfiction. It's like the first chapter for this fic, I don't want to post it again. 
> 
> All of this said, I hope you enjoy it!

There had been this funny feeling in his stomach when he had first asked Marco if he wanted to drink a coffee with him, as a thank you for taking care of his phone. And now, the same funny feeling when Jean asked Marco if he wanted to stay the night at his place. Anticipation, nervousity mixed with the happiness he was feeling when he was around Marco.

They had spent half of the day together, Marco had picked up Jean from school, went to the shopping hall because the blond boy needed a new pair of gloves, and afterwards, they went to the 106th trainee squad because it was time to work for Marco. The café was opened until 7 p.m and until they had cleaned the dishes and prepared everything for the next morning, it was already 8 p.m.

So Jean had asked. His lessons started later on Tuesdays and Marco had told him that he was working late tomorrow as well and his roommate probably had his girlfriend over. He wouldn't mind enjoying Marco's company a bit longer, not at all. He was actually amazed how much time he could spend with the other boy without being bored or annoyed.

"Really?", Marco smiled happily while he put on his jacket, "It won't be a bother?"

"Naah, not at all. My parents aren't home and we can get delivery pizza if you're hungry. So no problem at all", Jean explained. There was it again, that feeling. Was he blushing? He wasn't blushing. Not at all.

"I'd love to! But I have nothing with me, so maybe it's not a good idea..."

"As I said, no problem. You don't have to worry."

They said good-bye to Hanji and Annie who had been working at the same time, then walked to the next taxi stand. Jean was far too lazy to take the bus, so after a short discussion, he was able to convince Marco to take the taxi and he would pay.

Marco was stunned by Jean's home. He had suspected that his parents had to be wealthy and probably own a big house, but this was a bit more than he had expected. There was a garden all around the modern house that was on a hill, the way to the entrance door was lighted with lamps. The garden must have been a paradise for little children, there was a lot of space to play. Marco grinned at the thought of a tiny Jean running around here playing soccer.

He couldn't inspect the house any further because it had started to rain and Jean grabbed his sleeve to pull him to the entrance as soon as he had payed the driver.

"That's where you live?", Marco asked, still dazzed by the first expression.

"Apparently yes? It's not that much of a big deal, I just... yeah... have rich parents", he answered while unlocking the door.

"Still, it's a completely different thing when you live in a small shared apartment." Jean muttered something that Marco couldn't understand, and he didn't ask what he had said. Because it sounded like it wasn't meant for his ears.

They took of their shoes and Jean hanged up their wet jackets, then lead them to the living room. It looked very comfortable, Marco decided. A huge crème-colored sofa, a table, a few shelves and a TV with two or three different game consoles beneath. He had wondered if Jean had his own TV in his room but since the consoles were here, it didn't seem so. Of course he had been thinking how Jean lived but hadn't come to any conclusion. His room was probably as messy as he imagined, though.

And Marco was nervous, although there were no parents in sight. I stood a bit lost at the door to the living room until Jean patted on the space next to him on the sofa. When the blackhaired boy had sat down, Jean picked his mobile.

"What do you want to eat? Pizza, noodles, asian, anything else?"

"I... uhm... don't know", Marco admitted, "You can choose, I'm fine with everything."

Jean clicked his tongue, scrolled aimlessly through his phone, then punched Marco's shoulder playfully. "Pizza it is. If I catch you trying to order the cheapest, you'll have to sleep on the floor."

They chose their pizza, Marco tried to order the cheapest but Jean noticed it, threatening him with the floor again. Marco laughed, picking something else.

He didn't believe the threat at all but it made the other boy happy, so he went with it. Jean kind of always pretended to be an ass. When he was alone with him, Marco had realized that the boy wasn't like that at all. Maybe unsure and a bit selfish. He wondered if his other friends were aware of these two sides or if he was the only one. Within these five weeks, Marco had learned a lot about Jean. His little quirks and habits, the way the talked, the amber eyes. He had never really noticed this kind of progress before when making friends.

Just watching him typing furiously on his phone because he didn't want to call the pizza place made him smile.

"Apparently they deliver it in twenty minutes. Do you want to play anything", he pointed lazily at the TV, "or do you want to see the house."

"I'd love to see your room!"

Jean's room was on the second floor, next to the bathroom. He warned Marco that it had already been his room when he had been a child and he had never changed much in the room arrangement. Marco didn't understand at first but then he saw the room. There was a wardrobe, a desk with chair, a shelf with different things, but - on the first sight - no bed. Then he saw the ladder. The bed was practically on top of the bathroom, hidden behind a curtain.

"Can I go up there?"

"Yeah... but I haven't cleaned, okay? I'll do that later. If you want to sleep there, later, I mean..."

"Jean, I haven't even seen it yet. I'm sure it's not that chaotic."

"I've warned you!" Marco grinned as the climbed up the ladder.

“Jean, that’s awesome!”, Jean heard his friend shouting when he lifted the curtain and disappeared behind it. He smiled as he followed him up there. Marco sat on the thick, big mattress under the tilted window in the roof. Around the mattress, Jean kept everything he need there - at least in his opinion: Clothes, pencils, sketchbooks, laptop, more scattered wrinkled clothing and junk food.

“It’s not that great”, he tried to play it down but Marco was too absorbed by the small room. Then he noticed the pictures at the walls. “Are they your friends?”

“Yeah, we all go to the same high school. Those are old pictures, I don’t think you’ll recognize them. That’s Connie and Reiner, there, Mikasa and Ymir. They took them in those photo booths on our school trip”, he explained and the other boy nodded.

“I remember them from the evening in the café. That’s… what was her name, Christa?”

“Yes. Now come on, they are really old and stupid.”

“Oh my god, Jean! That’s you?”, Marco pointed on one of the photos. It showed him, Connie and Sasha in kindergarten, all of them proudly holding up strawberries. Jean surely was a bit embarrassed. He had been chubby until the first or second year of the high school and he never liked it to think back.

“Ugh… yeah… can we not talk about it?”

“You were cute”, Marco looked up from the picture at Jean with a smile on his lips. Jean huffed and went back to the ladder to hide the blush that was surely creeping on his face. “Come on, the pizza guy will arrive soon.”

As soon as they were downstairs, the doorbell rang and Jean left Marco in the living room to get their food. It was probably way too much but Jean had insisted on getting a lot of extra stuff. They turned on the TV while eating to have some distraction and Marco enjoyed listening to Jeans rambling about how horrible the show that was on was. After they were both full and the rest of the pizza ended in the refrigerator, the boys switched to playing games on the PS3 until it was midnight and decided that it was enough. Especially because Marco kept winning in Mario Kart.

Halfway through the evening, Jean started to become curious. Marco was still wearing the black glove on his right hand and the eyepatch, he wasn’t planning to keep it on in bed, was he? And he still didn’t know why he was wearing both of them, so maybe tonight was a good moment to ask. Or it was extremely stupid.

Marco yawned next to him. “Can we go to sleep? I’m… uhh…”, he yawned again, “very tired.”

“Sure. I’ll have to clean my bed first, so you can sleep there”, Jean proposed. Hell, it had been ages since he had a real sleepover. Drunk friends who fall asleep in the bathtub don’t count. So it was only natural to let the friend sleep in one’s own bed, wasn’t it?

“And where will you sleep?”

“I have a spare mattress somewhere, I’ll sleep in the lower part of my room” Marco nodded, thought for a moment, then looked away.

“Oh,okay. I mean, if you want to… you don’t have to if you don’t want to, I understand that, but… we can both sleep in your bed. It’s big enough for both of us. I mean… you know, if you want…”

Jean didn’t really know what to do or say. He would love to, for some reason, really wanted to spend even the night close to his friend but on the other hand, wasn’t it kind of weird for two nearly-adult-men to share a bed?

There was nobody to judge him, he decided. And Marco didn’t seem to mind so why not.

“Yeah, sure. Come on, let’s find some clothes for you and a toothbrush.”

The situation shifted towards akward, Jean could feel it. He sent Marco to the bathroom with a towel and a spare toothbrush to have some time to clean his bed. To be honest, it was quite disgusting if you looked a bit closer. The package of chips surely wasn’t the freshest and he couldn’t even remember when he had worn the t-shirt he found half under the mattress. At least he had found a washed t-shirt that should be Marcos size. Despite having nearly the same height, Marcos shoulders were much broader than his, Jean had noticed.

The creaking of the ladder announced Marcos return.

“Thank you for letting me use your bathroom”, Marco smiled. He was scratching over the skin between sleeve and glove, while he looked nervously at Jean. It was oblivious that he was uncomfortable.

“No sweat, it’s just me after all, no need to be all formal”, Jean tried to comfort Marco, just to drop the bomb a second later.

“I was wondering, well, I’ve been wondering for quite some time why you always have the eyepatch and the glove.”

Marco didn’t seem to be as shocked as he had expected.

“You don’t have to answer, if you don’t want to, I just thought that you wanted to take it off while sleeping so maybe it’s easier if I ask you and---” Marco interrupted him with a laughter.

“Jean, you’re going to choke on your tongue if you don’t stop talking for a second. The thing is, I don’t know how to talk about it properly, it makes it a lot easier for me since you’re asking, really. Thank you.

It’s something in my genes, that the skin of my right arm looks kind of weird. And its motion isn’t as good as in the left arm. It goes up until here”, Marco motioned over a part of the right side of his chest and up to his neck, “And it also causes the blindness of my right eye.”

“Oh… I didn’t know that.”

“Well, because I didn’t tell you yet. You don’t have to worry about me, it doesn’t hurt or anything.”

“Can--- can I see it?”, Jean asked carefully. It was probably incredible stupid.

“I don’t want you to think I’m disgusting”, Marco muttered. His eye stared off to the curtain, like it’s his last escape. Jean huffed and grabbed his shoulders.

“I would never think of you as disgusting, don’t think of me like that, alright? But I’m curious.”

Marco took a deep breath, took the cord of the eyepatch and breathed out as he was taking it off. In the dim light of the lamp on the nightstand, two different eyes looked at Jean expectantly. One of them chocolate brown and the other one milky-white. They must have read something in Jean’s reaction because they looked away and Marco turned his to the side, that only the brown eye was visible for him.

“Don’t turn away”, Jean whispered softly.

“It’s ugly”, Marco mumbled but looked back at Jean anyway. It was fascinating and strange for him, in his chest, it felt constricted because of all the trust the freckled boy had in him.

“Idiot, it’s not ugly… Do-do you want to show me your arm, too?”

He took off the glove hesitatingly, then the black long-sleeve shirt. It was probably embarrassing for both of them, Jean thought. It was his bedroom after all, they sat on his bed and there was a guy who took off his shirt in front of him. To be honest, he had guessed that the first person to do it here was going to be a girl. Even when his girlfriend had slept in his bed, they had never crossed that line. In another context, of course. Marco was just showing him his skin, nothing else. Then why did he feel so nervous about all of this?

Marco put the shirt aside and revealed his arm. He had been right, the skin was discolored at his hand, the whole arm and a part of his shoulders, chest and neck. It was reddish like a burn.

“That looks unhealthy…”, Jean muttered. The other boy had to smile a bit. “Well, you’re right. But as I said, it doesn’t hurt. I just don’t feel comfortable about showing it in public.”

“It’s not that bad!” However, Marco shook his head.

“People stare. I mean, they even stare because of my gloves and the eyepatch but don’t think further about it. But when they see this, they stare even more because they feel sympathy or are too curious, but in a bad way. Like they just want to know if it’s infectious.”

“That must suck.”

Marco had to laugh. “Yeah, it is. Uhm… its getting kind of cold without a shirt. Do you have something for me to wear?” Jeans mind was so wrapped around the discoloring that it took him a moment to comprehend Marcos question and give him the shirt he had found. However, despite it, Marco didn’t look bad. He was more muscular than Jean and even on his chest, there seemed to be some freckles scattered as well.

Jean took turn in using the bathroom after this interesting, but still awkward conversation. On his way back, he took a blanket from the wardrobe in the hallway and brought it to his bed were Marco was waiting. After he had given him the blanket and they had arranged their sleeping position, Jean turned off the light.

“That’s like a sleepover”, Marco whispered in the darkness. Jean groaned.

“Were nearly adults, were not going to talk about our crushes and deep dark secrets, if you’re expecting that.”

“But it could be fun.”

“Maaaarcooo… no. Good night”

“Good night, Jean.”

He stayed awake a bit longer, mostly because he wasn’t that tired yet. He was young after all and sleep was so unnecessary in that age. It was unusual to hear another person’s breathing next to himself, he hadn’t been aware of that in a long time. Marcos breathing was constant and relaxed, he was probably already asleep. And then the boy noticed, that some of Marcos warmth was seeping over to him, as well as his scent. He wondered how warm it would be to lie right next to Marco under the same blanket.

Jean slowly fell asleep.

When he woke up, the space next to him on the mattress was empty. It took him a moment to remember why he had another pillow and blanket on it and why he had slept that much at the right side.

Right: Marco. Where was he? He was probably already up and showering or in the living room. It would be boring to wait until he woke up.

Just as he had thought about standing up, he heard the creaking of the ladder and the rustling of the curtain.

“Hey, good morning”, Marco said with a bright smile when Jean turned around.

“It’s probably the middle of the night… What time is it by the way, and where have you been?”

“I was in the bathroom and its around 9.30”, Marco explained as he sat down next to Jean. He must look horrible, his hair disheveled and probably really grumpy expression, but Marco didn’t seem to mind.

“Still fucking middle of the night…”, he mumbled, “You can take a shower if you want to. Towels are in the wardrobe in the left drawer”

“Alright, thank you. Sleep well, Jean”, Marco climbed back down and Jean heard him opening the drawer to take a towel.

He must have fallen asleep again because he woke up from a hand on his shoulder and a smiling Marco connected to said left hand. The eyepatch was back on his place and so were his black clothes. It hurt Jean a bit. Did Marco not trust him enough to not cover his blind eye around him? Had he reacted that badly last night? At least, he didn’t wear the glove.

“You fell asleep again. I put the towel on the sink, I hope that’s alright. Should I prepare breakfast? I can make pancakes?”, the boy asked. Jean couldn’t say why but it was adorable. The situation, Marcos idea, Marco himself and he had no idea how to deal with that observation. It was just Marco’s way of being that was so special to him.

“Yeah, sure. I should be ready in ten minutes…” Jean crawled further under the blanket, hoping that Marco didn’t notice.

“Okay, then see you in a bit” Marco took his hand away from Jeans shoulder but he could still feel the warmth where his friend had touched him, even when he stood under the shower.

On the way to the kitchen, he was welcomed by the sweet scent of pancakes. Marco was standing at the stove, a bowl with the batter on the one side and a plate with a staple of golden pancakes on the other. He was so engaged in his task, humming a melody while turning the pancakes that he didn’t notice Jean until he stood right next to him.

“Oh, you’re back! I uhh… took what I found, there was nothing I wasn’t supposed to take, was there?”

“No, it’s alright, don’t worry. They look good.”

“Thank you, Jean.”

There was it, the way Marco said Jean’s name. It was soft, like it belonged on his tongue. It sounded differently to the way the said somebody else’s name.

“Jean?” There was it again. Jean realized that he was still standing next to the black haired boy, watching him making some more pancakes. He turned his head to look to the source of the noise and was surprised to see Marco looking right into his eyes.

Marco leaned towards him, it was slow and cautious but Jean didn’t take a step back. He could though, turn away, set the table, whatever. He could but he didn’t want to. He could see the chocolate brown eye flicker from his eyes to his mouth before he closed his eyes.

A pair of soft lips touched his own.

 

 


End file.
